


breathe

by TeagueBlack



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Pirate, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Rare Pairings, Romance, merman!sylvain, pirate!edelgard, when you're playing BE route but your only recruit is sylvain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-24 13:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20908187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeagueBlack/pseuds/TeagueBlack
Summary: Pirate captain Edelgard meets a merman, Sylvain, who insists on following the ship around. It's not like he's doing harm to them, so she lets him.Though she won't admit that she can't swim.





	breathe

**Author's Note:**

> A crack pair which ended up becoming a pair that I really, really like, for some unfathomable reason. It probably has to do with my experiences as Sylvain on an FE3H Discord server, along with the Edelgard roleplayer (she's really sweet!). 
> 
> ...and maybe some Three Houses D&D shenanigans.

The first time Edelgard meets a merman, she asks him if he can breathe air. He just laughs and tells her, “No, because you take my breath away.”

Of course, he’s joking. Unlike some legends, he doesn’t need water to breathe, though he does need it so he won’t dry out. 

Which means it’s a wholly bad idea for him to pull himself onto her ship, especially when it’s a  _ pirate _ ship. Pirates aren’t known for their love of mermaids - those beautiful women with the tails of fishes, luring sailors with their songs before drowning them to feast on their flesh. Mermen, on the other hand, are supposed to be ugly, violent beings, who don’t rely on songs but instead use their monstrous strength to tear their prey to pieces. Either way, most pirates would avoid merfolk like the plague or cut them to pieces, lest they risk their crews’ lives.

As far as Edelgard can tell, she’s either met a merman on the ‘less ugly and violent’ end of the spectrum, or a naked guy in a costume. Though the scales look much too real, feel much too real, to be a farce. She figures he can’t be  _ that _ bad, though he keeps making eyes at her and her crew, at which point she tells him to get off her ship. When he slips back into the sea, he hangs around for longer, and eventually he follows them. 

“He’s a bit of a creep, isn’t he, Edie?” Dorothea remarks.    


Edelgard shrugs, but she does remember his hair is bright orange...which means she has to pick up some fresh fruit at the next port or her crew will all get scurvy. 

* * *

He tells her his name is Sylvain (not that she asked), that he was born in a cold sea, and that he likes long swims along the beach and watching the sunset. She asks him why he follows her ship, and he just shrugs and tells her he felt a calling. 

“Maybe the sea breeze blew your voice to me, and I heard it.”

It might not be so much a calling as it is a whim, she thinks. Merfolk are fickle creatures, whose interests in humans are often fleeting, like footprints in the sand being washed away by the waves. They’ll forget about humans they once cared about, as easily as one forgets about breathing. 

Before he slips back into the ocean again, he warns her of the impending storm, and she notes it silently. 

Except his warning isn’t enough, because the storm that night is violent, stirring up the waves, tossing the ship around. Trying to navigate is almost impossible in this weather, but they have to keep moving - a stationary ship will only be a sitting duck for the waves. It’s all the crew can do to hold on to the ship for dear life.

It fills Edelgard with dread. Looking out at the pitch black of the open sea, she knows that if she falls in she will never be found again. Especially because of one little thing she hasn’t told her crew, for fear that they’d think it to be a joke or mock her for how ridiculous it is. 

She can’t swim. A pirate who can’t swim is laughable, and yet—

A particularly brutal wave hits the ship, and she loses her footing for just an instant. 

She screams. She isn’t sure if anyone hears. 

All she knows is that she’ll meet her end, lost to the sea forever, as she plunges into the cold, dark depths. 

* * *

Edelgard wakes up, alive. It doesn’t quite register at first, since it seems like she’s already dead and in the afterlife (not that she believes in one, she always thought the finality of death was all that was certain). 

Except that the sand in her hair is very, very real, as is the presence of Sylvain’s hand in hers. And the somewhat unpleasant texture of his wet tail curled around her ankles.

She sits up groggily, pulling her hand out of his grip, wondering where she is, how she got here, where her crew is…

_ Her crew. _

“Where are they?!” She’s frantic, and it’s not like her - normally she’s in control of the situation and she’s calm, rational, but this time she’s just survived a freak storm and the crew is nowhere in sight. Whipping her head around, she sees the ship with its familiar flag, the rest of the Black Eagles already disembarking and running towards her, calling for their captain, and relief fills her. 

Dorothea’s arms wrap around her as she wails about how worried she was, Hubert’s at her side chiding both of them, Caspar’s yelling about how he’ll fight the god of the sea for causing such a storm...there’s just a lot going on at the moment, and Edelgard doesn’t even know how she’s alive until she turns to Sylvain.

And then it hits her. He saved her. In the dark depths of the ocean, he searched endlessly to find her, to bring her to the surface and pull the water from her lungs. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. The crew turns towards him, the lone merman on the beach. 

_ Their  _ merman, now that they think about it. 

* * *

After that Sylvain’s an honorary member of their crew, kind of. He still follows the ship around, but now he’ll toss up some fish every so often. The only time they get to have fresh food is when they reach a port and restock, so the fish is a welcome treat. 

Edelgard finds herself talking with him a lot more now, or at least more than she used to. It’s no longer a mostly one-sided conversation where he slips in flirtatious lines when he can. Instead, he’s the one doing more listening this time, patient as she quietly tells him things she never thought she’d say. 

About how rats scare her, and that’s why there isn’t a single one in sight aboard her ship.

About how chains bring back painful memories, and that’s why she’ll fight her fiercest when faced with the naval crews, come to arrest pirates. 

About how the ocean at night is frightful, with its endless depths and darkness, with her inability to take control, to even breathe. 

When she tells him the last one, he speaks with a tone that is both serious and playful.

_ “A kiss from a mermaid lets you breathe underwater. Whaddya say to that?” _

A brief second of hesitation, and then she refuses. She’s not even sure if he’s telling the truth: he could be just saying that to get a kiss out of her, and his laughter at her somewhat pink face only fuels her resolve.

_ Damn merfolk. _

He brings up his offer a few times, but she never takes him up to it, not even when her gaze lingers on his lips for a moment too long as she wonders if he’ll taste like sea spray. Then she’ll shake herself out of her delusion - she’s a pirate, but also  _ human,  _ and merfolk live for what, two hundred years? There’s no way they could have a future, and she has no interest in midsummer night flings. 

One day, he disappears, and she tries to tell herself it was expected. He’s a merman, his whims come and go like the breeze, and even if they see him again he’ll have forgotten all about them. She was the foolish one, she sighs to herself, to pour her secrets out to him, when she’s just a drop in the ocean. No one would cling to that one drop when they had the whole wide world out there. 

But she cannot shake this uneasy feeling, cannot stand the silence that fills the empty space where he used to lie whenever he came on deck. When he’d sing with Dorothea and chat with Caspar while Linhardt dozed. When he’d beg Bernadetta for stories and be threatened to hell and back by Hubert. When he’d annoy Ferdinand and delight Petra with objects from the depths of the ocean, like a letter in a bottle or a fork with a mysterious emblem carved on it. 

Most of all, she cannot stand the silence of a dark night, when he’d be next to her as she stared up at the stars, when she’d show him how she could use the stars to navigate and he watched in awe, because he’d done the same thing but in a different manner. 

When she’d let him call her ‘El’, just once, but it was enough to make her shiver just a little. 

She decides to look for him. Just in case, just a hunch, just on a fleeting whim, she thinks. 

Because she has a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t just  _ do _ this to her, even if he is a merman, even if the remaining years of her life would mean nothing to his two hundred.

* * *

It’s at least two months later that she finally finds him. 

The whole thing has felt like a wild goose chase to her, but the Eagles’ loyalty and support have never wavered. In fact, it seems to have grown stronger this whole time. 

They all miss  _ their _ merman, she thinks. 

Upon reaching the next port, she spots a poster for a travelling circus.  _ One night only _ , it reads.

_ Featuring a real live merman! _

Surely this must be a farce. It’s just another man in a costume, just another useless lead—

She takes the poster with her and buys a ticket anyway. 

There’s a massive crowd, around an equally massive tank. It would impress her if she was anyone else, if she allowed herself to buy into a lie just like them. 

Except it’s like a dagger to her heart, because there’s Sylvain, just kind of floating in the middle, his eyes glassy and his smile hollow. It is him and yet it is  _ not _ him. All the little things are missing — the crinkles by his eyes when his smile is genuine, the tilt of his head when he’s listening intently, the sheer exuberance that he radiated…

He sees her, then, and then his eyes flicker to life and he swims forward, pressing his palms to the glass as he gazes at her. 

When the crowds begin to dissipate, she reaches up and puts her hands over his, wishes the cold, cruel glass wouldn’t separate them, even if his hands would be just as cold, because there is nothing cruel about him in the slightest. 

“I will save you,” she promises, and she tells herself she cannot cry, will not cry. Not yet. 

He merely nods. He is weakened, especially in this tank where the water is a revolting shade of green. A merman of the sea cares not for swamp water, nor does he care for a tank that seems massive to a human but is barely worth a drop of the whole ocean he once knew. 

* * *

Tonight, the circus has come to town. Tomorrow at dawn, they will leave. 

The time to act is now. 

The Black Eagles sneak in, quickly, quietly, Edelgard leading the most direct path to the tent where Sylvain’s tank is. It should be a simple rescue mission, a nip in and out, and they would disappear with the sunrise and their merman in tow. 

Except things go awry, because  _ of course they do _ , and then they’re fighting guards and someone’s gun misfires, and  _ of course _ there’s a convenient source of fuel for when they need to light the flaming rings—

Long story short, the circus is on fire. People are screaming, running, panicking because this fire is spreading much faster than anyone could’ve ever expected. All Edelgard can do is run,  _ run _ like her life depends on it. (Except that it’s Sylvain’s life that depends on how fast she can run, it’s Sylvain’s life that matters right here and now.)

She reaches the tent, and he’s right where she left him. No one bothered to come back for him, not when it’s so dangerous. They’re not  _ that _ stupid, they can find a new attraction when it pleases them. 

She sees red. How dare they leave him here, leave him to burn when it was they who dragged him from the seas and imprisoned him for coin that he has no use of?

Her grip on her axe tightens, and she lifts it. He backs away from the glass. 

_ Breathe. _

She brings the axe down upon the glass, a sick satisfaction filling her as she smashes it. And she lifts it and does it over, and over, and over again, until the entire front of the tank is shattered to smithereens, until that glass is well and truly broken. Swamp water keeps gushing out, soaking her boots, all disgusting and slimy, but it doesn’t matter because now Sylvain is on the floor of his tank, chest heaving as he gulps in fresh air—

Ignoring the pieces of broken glass, she reaches for him, scoops him up and holds him tight.  All the breath leaves him for a moment, and he’s clinging to her, silent, and he’s acutely aware of how warm she is, how fast her heart is beating. How much his own heart hurts.

Around them, the world burns, flames licking at the tents, probably reaching theirs any moment now. 

It’s wholly inappropriate to think of anything else but getting out,  _ fast _ , but then she lets out a nervous laugh because  _ he’s back, he’s here in her arms, he’s alive. _

It’s also a wholly inappropriate place for him to kiss her  _ (the place is burning, Sylvain) _ , but he does so anyway. Just pulls back to meet her eyes before he kisses her. 

He tastes like sea spray, which means he’s awfully salty, but it’s definitely better than swamp water. It’s like he never left the ocean, like it clung to him even after he was away for so long. 

(It makes no sense to her, but then again, nothing really makes sense anymore.)

* * *

Once she gets him out of there, out of the ring of burning tents, she collapses in front of her crew, in front of him. It doesn’t matter that all the Black Eagles are staring at her when she buries her face in his shoulder and finally,  _ finally _ cries. 

"I'm so sorry. I- I should have made it here sooner. I hope you can forgive me."

"Shh, it's okay. I wouldn't've blamed you." 

She knows what it means. Even if he died, he wouldn't have blamed her for it. He'd never blame her even if she failed, and that's like a dagger in her heart all over again.

When she lets go, he pulls back from her, and slips into the ocean. It wraps around him, welcoming its lost child, a comforting blanket of cold waves that tell him he is home. Yet it also yearns for revenge, for the righting of a wrong done to a child of the sea.

He looks up at her and the crew, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight, he mouths,  _ “Cover your ears.” _

They comply. She puts her hands over her ears and her trust in him.

Sylvain takes a deep breath and sings. 

This song is different from all the ones he sang with them. It’s a haunting song that ensnares its victims, turning them to little more than puppets. They cannot stop themselves from being pulled by his call, walking to their deaths while fully aware that the last thing they will see is the pitch black of the open sea, that their last breath will be stolen away as their lungs fill with water and they are lost to the depths forever. 

This is the fate of the circus crew, all of them, every last one. 

Normally, Edelgard would feel some sympathy, but she does not, not now.

Tonight, the circus  _ was _ in town. But they never left, having sunk to the bottom of the sea.

* * *

It’s on a quiet night at another port that Edelgard comes to sit at the dock. Next to her is Sylvain, the merman whom she walked through fire and water for. 

“You saved me,” he states, simply, and while she’s not looking at him directly, she can tell that the crinkles by his eyes have returned. He’s smiling.

“I want to jump in the water,” she suddenly says, and he’s surprised until she looks up at him, looks him in the eye. She trusts that he won’t let her drown. 

“Count of three?” He takes her hand. She nods. 

One. Two.

Three. 

For the first time, she’s  _ smiling _ as she jumps into the water, as he plunges with her into the depths, as they fall together. 

When her head goes underwater, she’s surprised that she can  _ breathe. _

He holds her as her head resurfaces, chuckling at the look on her face. 

_ “A kiss from a mermaid lets you breathe underwater. Whaddya say to that?” _

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she reaches for him and kisses him again.

She's finally, finally not afraid of drowning, because even if she's swept to the darkest depths of the sea, she can  _ breathe _ .

And she knows he'll search always, endlessly to find her again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe someday I'll write about the D&D moments. Someday.


End file.
